His
by elliejelliebean
Summary: She very clearly isn't, and has no desire to become, his. So why can he not help but continue to think of her in this way? Elizabeth and Darcy, Regency One-Shot.


**A/N: This is just a little something I thought up late at night. It was written at a time when I was very, very tired, so forgive me if it is a little convoluted. Enjoy!**

**Note: I know that this story may originally seem to conflict with the canon idea that Darcy "cannot pinpoint" the exact moment that he knew that he was in love with Elizabeth. My defense is that he was always very much _physically attracted_ to Lizzy; the actual real, true love that was love of her entire character came later. **

His

It is rather difficult, when knowing a person by a name and associating them with that name for some time, to switch the way that they are addressed. Fitzwilliam Darcy knew this from experience, for during the first eight years of his sister Georgiana's life, he had addressed her, in thoughts and conversations, as _Georgie_. However, upon entering the inevitable phase during which the young girl decided that she was no longer a child and should therefore not be treated as such, she insisted on _Georgiana_. _Georgie_, she said, was silly and childish and too much like the boy's name. He had, out of respect, honored her request, although not without difficulty.

His little sister, with her blonde hair, sparkling eyes, and wide smile, was decidedly _Georgie_. The name was light and pretty and happy, like her. The four syllables seemed too weighed down for the little girl, too heavy and elegant for her toothy smile and tinkling laugh.

However, as she truly left childhood behind, not just in her mind but in her body and mannerisms, she grew into the name. Her tall frame carried an air of stateliness, and her smile, while still beautiful and contagious, was softer and more elegant. As the years passed, addressing her as _Georgie_ now became incomprehensible. She was changed, and the woman that he associated with the name Georgiana was a different person than little Georgie.

He learnt, eight years after Georgiana's insistence on a change of address, that the same concept applied to addressing someone in one's thoughts. One could forever call a person something mundane—like Miss Bennet, for example—and yet one always had a name that they privately associated with people of their acquaintance. In Darcy's convoluted thoughts, Miss Bennet was always, no matter how hard he tried to stop the habit, _My Elizabeth_.

He could pinpoint the exact moment that he had started calling her this, for it was to him marked with intense emotion—horrification at himself, and a feeling of an utter loss in self control. It was the morning after he had first gazed into her fine eyes, and those eyes and the face that accompanied them—already undeniably pretty but rising every moment in his esteem—had plagued his dreams all night. He was rather outraged at himself; that Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberly should spend the night in not at all gentlemanly but undeniably pleasant dreams of a woman he had known for not five hours was simply preposterous!

And then, when determinately thinking of other, safer topics than the very recent object of his affections, he had dwelt of the upcoming dinner that they were to attend at Lucas Lodge. However, with no control at all over the stray thought, he had pondered carelessly and with a quickly beating heart: _I wonder if I shall see My Elizabeth there?_

His? He reprimanded himself. Since when had she been _his_? She most certainly was not _his_—she hardly knew him! And yet, try as he might to break the habit in the following months, the name had stuck. In all his thoughts, it was there:

'What is detestable Wickham doing with _My Elizabeth_?'

'I must ask _My Elizabeth_ to dance—it is her advised way of 'encouraging affection', is it not?'

'_My Elizabeth _is to be near Rosings? Well, then, so will I.'

When she rejected him, it was like Georgiana all over again, reprimanding him for the way he regarded her, only this time, accompanied with a fierce pain beyond anything he could have ever imagined.

"Please, Fitzwilliam! I am Georgiana, now—I am no longer a child!" Georgiana had said. He could hear His Elizabeth, what she would say if she knew of his name for her.

"Please, Mr. Darcy! I am Miss Bennet, to you—I _was never_ yours, nor will I ever be."

He tried as hard as he possibly could to change his name for her after that incident. Perhaps if he called her Miss Bennet now, she would change, become just another of his many acquaintances? He so dearly hoped so, for it would be so much less painful for him if she did. Just like Georgiana becoming what she had forced herself to be called, His Elizabeth would cease to be to him what she indirectly forced herself not to be called—anything that implied his love for her.

But it did not work. In his hours of thought on the subject, it was a constant stream of:

'My Eliz—Miss Bennet, seems to be of the opinion that I am…'

'…but My Elizabeth is such—wait, no, _Miss Bennet_ is such…'

'…Does My Elizabeth know what she does to me?'

She refused to change. She was His Elizabeth, no matter how strongly she herself opposed that fact.

The cold irony of the situation was not lost on Darcy—she would never be his, and yet, in a less real way, she always would be.

* * *

_2 Years Later_

Mr. Darcy looked up from his letter to find his wife contentedly asleep on the sofa in their shared study, firelight dancing on her face and making her, almost literally, glow. He could not but help keep a small half-smile off his face. With a sigh, he realized that it must be very late and resolved to finish his letter tomorrow.

He got up from his desk and stretched his arms briefly before making his way over to her and expertly sliding one hand underneath her knees and another under her lower back. This was not the first time he had done this.

Her arms instinctively wrapped around his neck and she buried her face in his chest, still sound asleep.

He held her closer, standing there a minute before he set off to his bedchamber—which was really actually _theirs_, seeing as she had never actually slept in her own room.

Upon entering the room, he lay her on the bed. He was very fatigued, very taken with his wife, and very uninterested in inviting any maids into his chamber to help them prepare for bed. So after preparing himself, he slowly, very carefully, let down his wife's hair as she slept on her side, combing it with his fingers. He removed her shoes, next, and her stockings, and then focused on the more difficult matter of the dress.

He took a great amount of pleasure in the fact that he could do whatever he pleased with her—caress her cheek, kiss her forehead, prepare her for bed himself—while she was asleep, for he had the knowledge that she would have absolutely no objection if she was awake. This knowledge was dearer to him than it might be for most men with their wives, for he also had the knowledge that, at one point in their lives, she would probably have quite literally killed him had he attempted anything of the sort.

She hadn't always been his.

She was now. She was His Elizabeth, and he took pleasure, now, in addressing her that way in his thoughts and otherwise. Of course, he took pleasure in calling her Mrs. Darcy also, for similar reasons. But she would always, when he thought of her, be His Elizabeth.

He dwelt for a moment on why he had never been able to give up the name after that dreadful evening. It was certainly not because he hoped that someday she might still be his—no, after that night he felt nothing but despair.

He could only suppose that it was because she had never changed. Georgiana had grown, become a different person, and therefore a change of address suited her. But for some reason, Elizabeth Bennethad greatly affected Fitzwilliam Darcy on first sight, in a way that would not ever, try as he might to make it happen, be reversed. Darcy was not easily moved by people (other than children, which he had a natural love and easiness for), and therefore, when he was moved, it was a greater and more irreversible effect.

She awoke, as he suspected she would, as he was removing her dress.

"Fitzwilliam," she said groggily, turning to face him.

"My Dearest Elizabeth," he said, looking very lovingly into her tired dark eyes. "Should you like, we can finish preparing you quickly and you can go right back to sleep. You must be very tired."

"Oh, I'm not so tired now," she said as she looked up at him, the tiredness leaving her and the glint of mischief and teasing so clear in her eyes that he could see it plainly in just the light of the moon. "And we are so agreeably dressed for other activities…"

At one time, this would have made his face turn very, very red. However, he was somewhat accustomed to his wife's forward manner—well, as accustomed as one such as himself can ever be—so there was only a light pinkness on his cheeks as he bantered back, "Well, if you insist, Dearest."

She smiled and leaned forward to kiss him. After a few moments, he slipped the sleeves of the undone dress off of his wife, and began to kiss her neck.

And he relished the fact that she was, undoubtedly, irreversably, impossibly, finally, and forever _his_.


End file.
